


the game of want and wanting

by ohponthavemercy



Category: The Borgias (2011)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-28
Updated: 2014-02-28
Packaged: 2018-01-14 01:38:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1247929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohponthavemercy/pseuds/ohponthavemercy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>she’s not a witch, she’s just a girl, a girl in a garden. (sort of modern/magic AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	the game of want and wanting

**Author's Note:**

> i started this out thinking about a deathless au but it turned into this (i will try my hand at a deathless au one day for something, i swear it). obviously heavy influences from deathless and richard siken’s litany in which things are crossed out and a tiny tiny shoutout to secret history if you are clever 
> 
> and don't ask me about the formatting

she’s not a witch, she’s just a girl, a girl in a garden. 

 

             okay, well, girls in gardens in fairytales are always waiting for princes, or they’re busy making daisy chains or pricking foolish fingers on rose thorns.

             here’s a secret: she’s the only thorn here to be truly afraid of. those aren’t daisies in her basket, those aren’t lily petals crushed between her mother’s fingers when she brings them to the villa on the end of the street, violet-edged like dreams.

             but you can’t go from prostitute to governor’s wife – ex-wife, now – without something in the universe having to give. or take, depending on who you ask. depends on what you are willing to give and take, what is yours and what isn’t.

             _you do whatever you want, whatever you can, sweetheart_ , says vanozza dei cattanei.  _whatever you have to do to get what you want. is it a crime to take what you want, when heaven knows no one else will get it for you? is it a sin?_

~

            she certainly doesn’t look like a witch. lucrezia borgia, apple of her father’s eye, his only daughter, attends all of the governor’s parties looking like a princess, don’t you know.  _pity about her mother,_  they whisper, and she balls her pretty little fists in her pretty little dress.  _lucrezia, though, lucrezia looks like a little angel._

            looks are deceptive, she knows for a fact, knows it like she knows the color of her lipstick tonight is redder than blood, like she knows the line between a poison and a remedy, the line of her brother’s jaw, slanting and tightening and angry.

            see, the problem is, when you spend your days in gardens picking things other than roses, when you wear your hair long and golden like another jason’s fleece, when you whisper things other than love poems under you breath for countless hours, things that little girls should never know, you run the risk of getting attention you don’t want.

            or do you?

            want, that is.

            calloused hands slide over hers under the table.  _my love_ , he says in a voice that’s meant to soothe and from anyone else would send her into even more of a rage, but this is cesare, and so it works, just as it always does, because there is nothing else that can soothe the roar for blood in her ears like his touch.

            he doesn’t ask her what’s wrong, because he doesn’t need to. he doesn’t move away, either. ( _are these measures of comfort or reasons for alarm,_ she wonders.)

             _some days,_  he says instead, listening to the gossip,  _i could just kill them all._

 _only some days_? she wants to ask. she knows what happened to orsini, della rovere, what will happen to the state senator’s widow, caterina sforza. what happened to juan only half a year ago. they ruled it a suicide. just fell into the river on a night stroll, probably drunk, what a pity, what a sign of youth wasted, the good always die young, don’t they.  _i only wish i had paid for those goddamn swimming lessons_ , governor rodrigo borgia said at the wake to weepy laughter _, or else he would have known how and would have been here today_. ( _lie,_ she thinks _, he taught me how, in the pool at the community center, back when we still loved each other_. the second statement is a lie too. probably.) but juan is still a wound in her brother’s side, and you do not prod a wounded animal, even if you know that, caged and bleeding, he would give his last breath to you if you only asked it.

instead she just tells him,  _me too_. she could. if she wanted to. if she had to.

            cesare gives her a glance. is it the words themselves, or the steel behind them ( _just like his,_ she wants to remind,  _just as it should be_ ), that startles that look out of him like a bird from a bush?

            they lapse into silence. if anyone were eavesdropping, they would have thought the borgia siblings, children of a famed silver tongue, were the worst conversationalists in the world. if only they could see their eyes, then they could know that siren calls are no longer words on the tongue and melodies in the air.

             _you once asked me to run away with you when we were children_ , she says.

            his face twists into a smile.  _you said yes, if i remember correctly. if i asked you today, would you change your mind, sis?_

 _i don’t regret my answer_ , lucrezia shakes her head.  _i regret that we never tried._

~

 _your eyeshadow is such an exquisite shade_ , giulia farnese, the beauty that graces her father’s household instead of her mother, purrs.  _your blush looks just so natural. what brand is this?_

             _you’d scream if you knew,_ lucrezia thinks with amusement, that pretty painted pout in an o of shock. it was vanozza who told her how to ward death off with kohl-lined eyes, to distract him from her scent with attar of roses. (there’s a reason why behind belladonna’s name, after all.) but vanozza is not here, and neither is gioffre, shipped off to some boarding school, and juan is dead. and cesare, cesare left home for some nearby city for college, away from this viper’s den she calls home.

            she doesn’t need to summon anything to see him – she has to fight not to, in every mirror and every pool and every tall man with broad shoulders and dark curls and darker eyes.

            if vanozza had taken aside her eldest and told him the same things she’d told lucrezia, if she’d told him how to read shadows and soak up nightmares in eggs, how to take someone’s breath away as easily as stealing a kiss and how to keep it poised in midair, would he have such shadows under his eyes?

            she watches him from a window at the back of the house on one of his visits home, his hands around someone’s throat as he slams them up against the brick wall of the alley because they called his sister a slut.  not that alarming, really, but he wouldn’t want her to see him like this, so she vanishes when he turns (that, too, is another lesson he missed out on – how to put your finger on the side of your nose and spin until there’s nothing left of you). no, if her way is by powder in the wine and leaves in her fingers, his is bruised knuckles and sharp knives.

            but it’s the sight of the blood on those bruised knuckles that makes her remember that blood purifies blood, just as poison can cure poison.

            is it a ritual for her own sake or his, she wonders, pain burning in her palm, but shakes her head because the difference can be hard to see, even for girls who read belladonna leaves. she reaches out for him when he approaches her spot in the backyard on a bench, and he reaches out in turn because this is what they always do, what they always will. his brow furrows at the stickiness in his hands. _lucrezia,_ he gasps out, startled at the blood. he squints at the cut like a fortune-teller, turning it over in his hands.

             _oh, sorry. i’m bleeding out all over you._

_never mind that, love. come inside, i’ll take care of it._

she feels a little pang of guilt at his concern, his hair falling over his forehead as he sits her down on the edge of the bathtub, wrapping her hand with exquisite tenderness, like the pain is his own ( _stop worrying_ , she wants to say.  _this is for you. blood for blood for blood_.)

            he kisses her thumb after it’s done.  _how’d you get it, anyway_?

             _i climbed the oak earlier with a book,_ she says, sheepish.

            he flicks her cheek with a finger and clicks his tongue.  _good children don’t climb trees_ , he mimics their housekeeper’s indignant squeaky tones, hands on hips. she laughs.

            good thing she is neither, nowadays.

~

            the night her father announces his plans for senator is the night she leaves.

            she counts them out, quietly. her maid, the butler, the two security guards out the backdoor. three tablespoons, ten minutes, eighteen hours of sleep and the nighttime for her.

            she’s not quite sure where she’s going, exactly. but her feet are moving along, and so she goes. it feels like a fairytale, like a dream, shadows coaxing her along. go to the bus-stop, little girl. get off, here. now. turn left. keep going. make sure it keeps raining. you’ve got the strength for it, you’ve had it for a long time.

            when she reaches a street mostly empty except for a tall dark figure with his collar flipped up against the wind, she almost laughs. of course. where else? all roads lead to rome.  seeing him framed against the rain doesn’t fill her up like she’s going to burst, sudden and swift like a bullet in the brain or a knife in the ribs. it is a fact, falling down inside her like she has for a long time, and the thing falling inside her is just the word  _oh_.

            she finds her breath, holds it, but he turns like he had sensed her.

             _good god – is that you? lucrezia? lucrezia!_ she’ll never get over the way he says her name, like she is some far off thing, a lighthouse maybe, and he is a ship lost at sea. he’s running across the street, and he’s calling her name, and all she can do is grab onto a streetlight and try not to cry as her teeth chatter, allegretto.

            he picks her up off the curb from his spot on the street, impatient as always. _you’re dripping wet. if i don’t get you inside, you’ll catch your death._

 _not likely_ , she thinks, or maybe she says out loud.  _but take me inside anyway._

he half-carries her inside an apartment that doesn’t feel like him other than its neatness. no knickknacks, no carelessly strewn things, nothing of him except a picture on the refrigerator. she glimpses a garden and golden hair.

             _i ran away,_ she informs him, as he’s peeling off her drenched coat and shrugging out of his. she doesn’t need to, but she craves that sort of finality at the moment.  _it’s not safe there for me anymore._ not with their father’s ambition crowding up the whole house.

             _and you feel safe here? with me?_ he snorts dubiously, half in shadow despite the best attempts of the dim lamp on the sidetable.  _you shouldn’t._

she looks at him. it feels like she’s the one under a spell, her entire world bathed in chiaroscuro, the rain pattering too loudly and too harshly against the windows against the roar of her heartbeat thundering in her ears. and okay, maybe she is a witch, but this is unlike any spell she’s ever known, ever hoped to cast, something made of rain and dust and the smell of him, warm and safe and  _cesare_.

            is she breaking the spell, or is she continuing it, she wonders, absentmindedly, stepping forward. it doesn’t matter. she’s taking the step. she dares, for the second time this evening. 

            her hand slithers around to the back of his neck, strong under her fingers. she tips her head back. he comes when she tugs easily, in a way that he’ll never follow anyone else.

            thunder rolls, outside. she arches up and places her lips over his, slowly, deliberately, just so.  a sudden calm, then.

            and then his mouth is softening against hers and his arms are around her again, hands pressing against her shoulder blades. her fingers skate over rough stubble on his jaw, teeth sinking into lip. 

            he’s sweeping mail and keys and coats off the sidetable now, hoisting her up, and it’s only as he growls that she remembers what he just said, that she shouldn’t feel safe with him, but she does, she does, she does, even as his teeth scrape over her pulse point. his hands on her are gentle, too gentle, like she’s made out of porcelain. it’s only when she shivers in his arms that he stops.

             _good god_ , he pants, pulling away, guilty and abashed.  _lucrezia – i. i’m sorry._ he won’t look at her.

            doesn’t stop her from looking at him, shrewdly.  _cesare._

 _you need a shower. just – just follow me._ his voice is hoarse, more so than usual.

she slides off the table, hopping nimbly over the fallen things and following him down a narrow hallway to a narrow room, the light flickering for a while before it decides to flare into full-blown, yellowish life.

             _let me check and make sure there’s still hot water._ he brushes by her without actually touching her, mumbling something to the plumbing. she casts her sweater over her head and shimmies out of her jeans while he’s busy.

             _that should do it –_ he comes to an abrupt stop as he turns his head.

she dances around him into the shower then leans out abruptly, forehead nearly touching his. before he can straighten, she’s got her fingers curled into the front of his shirt.

            her name escapes from his lips in a warning growl.  _lucrezia, please –_

 _\- listen to me._ she hisses.  _you’ve spent a lifetime pulling away from me._

_we can’t –_

_\- i don’t care. do you hear me? i don’t care._ she’s tired of being denied, of being caged, of being forced to do a father’s bidding long after the love was gone. she sucks in a breath and lets it out in a rush.  _just, please._

her hand comes up to cup his jaw, thumb brushing across his mouth. he nips it, breath hot against her skin.

            she closes her eyes.  _love me_ , she whispers, hoarse and tired and broken.

            let it never be said that cesare borgia could ever deny her anything (even and especially and always himself).

~

            the last lesson she had with vanozza was on bottling memories. at the time, she didn’t think she would ever want to. nothing in the borgia household seemed worth preserving.

            but if she were to ever bottle a memory, these would be the things she’d keep in it:

            the lazy morning, rain sneaking kisses at the windows, room dappled in pale grey-blue light. his arm around her waist, pulled snug, hands tracing patterns on her shoulder blades.

           she snuggles into his chest and tells him, teasingly, that shoulder blades are the remnants of wings. his chuckle rumbles through her.  _yours, maybe_ , he kisses her shoulder, and she just shakes her head at him as he rests her chin on the top of her head and drifts back to sleep.

            if she were to bottle this memory, it would wake him, and she can’t bring herself to do that.

            but if this is a crime, to want to keep him here forever, then heaven help her, so be it. 


End file.
